Vodafone on quad play: It's tough for telcos

Vodafone has revealed that it will begin selling broadband next year and said that it will add TV to its UK offering ‘at some point after that’.

Speaking at the operator’s half-year results media roundtable, CEO Vittorio Colao said that he didn’t believe the UK had become a quad play market yet, but that if it did the firm ‘would be there’.

The network’s boss said that the addition of TV and broadband to its range of products was ‘more of a defensive or reactive move’ designed to complement its main strategy.

Colao emphasised the difficult position mobile firms were placed in if they tried to establish themselves as a quad play business, saying: ‘There are bigger profit pulls in the fixed line and TV spaces than there is in mobile; a lot depends on the big players BT and Sky. Neither ourselves nor EE will be shaping the TV market.’

Colao did nothing to dispel the rumours linking the network to Talk Talk and Sky by name-checking both companies while discussing potential partners in the quad play arena. Vodafone’s CEO said that its broadband infrastructure would start in-house and use BT infrastructure when it needed to, but he also refused to rule out partnering with Sky and Talk Talk at some stage.

Discussing the brand’s UK performance, Colao said that the firm had seen positive signs in relation to its 4G performance, which was gaining usage and traction. This was of particular significance as the operator estimated that ARPU for 4G customers was three times more than that of 3G. Vodafone said that it would carry on pushing its enterprise services as it continued to pitch itself as a fully integrated service provider.